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The past couple of days have been pretty busy on the trip preparation front, and most of it consist of me hemorrhaging money left and right. Oh well. I keep on telling myself that this isn’t something I’ll have the chance to do many times in my lifetime.

1) I realized that I didn’t need a visa for Thailand.
Apparently Japanese individuals don’t need visas for the royal kingdom of Thailand. The documentation online is remarkably obscure, but my parents have visited multiple times so that’s that.

2) I made a hack that lets me upload my GPS logs from my BadElf GPS Pro to a shareable online map. I emailed the folks from BadElf and they seemed a bit interested, so hopefully it’s helpful for someone other than myself. At least it beats the $99/year and $49 service fee Spot Messenger charges.

3) I finished purchasing all my flights. I ended up adding a leg from Auckland to Christchurch (it would have been nice if it were just one flight, going in Auckland and out Christchurch, but this way what I do is fly into Auckland, connect to Christchurch, and make my way up north renting a car. If anyone wants to travel to New Zealand, the south-to-north trip apparently is cheaper for renting a car, because there’s fewer drivers going north from Christchurch as opposed to south from Auckland.

4) I purchased travel insurance with WorldNomads. They’re a bit steeper than some of the medical travel insurance I found elsewhere, but it’s the best package insurance I can get as a non-US national (after a bit of research, it seems US permanent residents don’t get Passport & Transport Documents, Missed Flight Connection, Hijacking but does cover Accident Death and Dismemberment). It works out to $3.70 per day, which is not bad if it gives me the peace of mind that should something go wrong, I can at least make a claim. I added coverage for $1000 of my camera equipment, missed connecting flights, and all the standard medical coverage.